Friday, August 22, 2014

IRS Streamlines Tax-Exempt Application Process for Most Charities

The Internal Revenue Service has recently released a new tax form to help small charitable organizations apply for tax-exempt status. Form 1023-EZ, introduced in July 2014, provides an alternative to the longer Form 1023 and will allow the IRS to more efficiently process applications for 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status.

The new Form 1023-EZ, available today on IRS.gov, is three pages
long, compared with the standard 26-page Form 1023. Most small
organizations, including as many as 70 percent of all applicants,
qualify to use the new streamlined form. Most organizations with gross
receipts of $50,000 or less and assets of $250,000 or less are eligible.

"Previously, all of these groups went through the same lengthy
application process -- regardless of size," [IRS Commissioner John] Koskinen said. "It didn't
matter if you were a small soccer or gardening club or a major research
organization. This process created needlessly long delays for groups,
which didn’t help the groups, the taxpaying public or the IRS.”The change will allow the IRS to speed the approval process for
smaller groups and free up resources to review applications from larger,
more complex organizations while reducing the application backlog.
Currently, the IRS has more than 60,000 501(c)(3) applications in its
backlog, with many of them pending for nine months.